Provenance

Possibly E. Williamson, Paris.[1] Sir Stewart Montagu Samuel [1856-1926], London. (Duveen Brothers Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold by 1905 to George J. Gould [1864-1923], New York, and Lakewood, New Jersey; sold c. 1927 back to (Duveen Brothers Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold 1941 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1943 to NGA.

[1] Duveen Brothers claimed that the bust had been given by Louis XIV of France (who commissioned the original marble version) to his brother Philippe, duc d'Orléans, and that it was kept in Philippe's Château de Saint-Cloud until the residence burned in 1870. However, no such bust is cited as being at Saint-Cloud or in the royal residences by any existing guidebook or inventory. See Anne-Lise Desmas' entry in Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, exh. cat., The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2008-2009, Los Angeles, 2008: 267-269.

Bibliography

1942

Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 254, repro. 225, as by Lorenzo Bernini.

1944

Duveen Brothers, Inc. Duveen Sculpture in Public Collections of America: A Catalog Raisonné with illustrations of Italian Renaissance Sculptures by the Great Masters which have passed through the House of Duveen. New York, 1944: figs. 230-231, as by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini.

Penny, Nicholas. "The Evolution of the Plinth, Pedestal, and Socle." In Collecting Sculpture in Early Modern Europe. Nicholas Penny and Eike D. Schmidt, eds. Studies in the History of Art 70, Symposium Papers 47 (2008): 478-479.